Three UC faculty members were recently snagged first and second prizes for intellectual property work at the 2010 Cincinnati Innovates Awards, sponsored by CincyTech.

First prize in the legal and patent award category went to Amit Bhattacharya, PhD, of environmental health, and Nelson Watts, MD, for Osteodynamics, Inc.

The life-science company—formed with the help of Integrated BioScience Solutions, LLC, and the business incubator BIOSTART—developed a device that enables painless and non-invasive diagnosis of osteoporosis based on the concept of "bone shock absorbance.”

The award carries a $10,000 cash prize for further research development.

Second prize in the same category went to Georg Weber, PhD, in the College of Pharmacy for developing the MetaMol Marker for breast cancer aggressiveness. Weber’s MetaMol Marker provides diagnostic tools to predict the likelihood of a breast tumor to grow and spread. The award carried a $5,000 cash prize.